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To: golfinvestor who wrote (81218)	9/22/2000 1:50:06 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

This process is identical to what happened with the railroad buildout. At that time, the rational/efficient thing to do would have been for the government to mandate a standard track gauge (distance between the tracks), before anyone had spent a lot of money building tracks. But that's not what happened. Instead, it was a chaotic, organic, Darwinian process. Initially, every company or state had their own gauge. Lots of small tracks that didn't connect. If you wanted to go any distance, you had to change trains. As the local track networks spread out and joined, it was necessary to unify the system. Everyone knew this was needed, but ripping up and replacing existing track was expensive. So it got put off, and all kinds of messy temporary measures/stopgaps/compromises happened. Everyone tried to get everyone else to change their track. No one wanted to change their own track. Everyone loudly proclaimed that their own gauge was the ideal standard. The Civil War speeded up the consolidation process, by the simple expedient of destroying all the track in the South. People aren't any more rational now then they were in the 1800s.